Safe Computing newsletter Mar 2017 – Use strong passwords

March 2, 2017

Dear members of the HLS community,

Welcome to the HLS ITS Safe Computing newsletter. Our goal with these quarterly advisories is to raise awareness of security related issues and topics. Should you have any questions on the following, please call ITS at 617-495-0722 or email hlshelp@law.harvard.edu.

Use Strong Passwords – Technology has changed in the last few years. Now it’s time to change the way we think about passwords. The password is the oldest way to identify someone in information technology, with its first use at MIT in 1961. A lot has changed since then, but the basic concept of a password has remained. Password theft happened almost immediately, as researchers helped themselves to more than their allotted portion of computing time. Today’s password thieves have much more nefarious goals. With the stakes higher, we need to adjust with the times and rethink how we use passwords.

How to Make a Strong Password

Method 1: Convert a long phrase to a string of characters.

Choose a personal phrase and reduce it to the first letters of each word, working in some numbers, capitalization, and punctuation.